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Layton and Harper agree on job creation in pre-budget talks, differ on tax cuts

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jack Layton and Prime Minister Stephen Harper found some common ground in a meeting Thursday during a pre-budget discussion: creating jobs must be a key feature of the next budget.
Jack Layton
Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jack Layton and Prime Minister Stephen Harper found some common ground in a meeting Thursday during a pre-budget discussion: creating jobs must be a key feature of the next budget.

But Layton made no headway in persuading Harper that ending corporate tax cuts planned for the next two years would be a means to put more money into the hands of vulnerable women and seniors.

“The proposition to the prime minister was simply that, we’re not out of the recession until people are back at work. He said he agreed with me,” Layton indicated after a “cordial” 30-minute afternoon meeting with the prime minister at his Langevin Block office.

Harper’s spokesman Dimitri Soudas did not dispute Layton’s account.

“Jobs will be an important part of the upcoming budget. As the prime minister has also stated previously, the recession won’t be truly over until we start seeing a steady recovery of jobs and job numbers,” Soudas told The Canadian Press.

“We’re pleased to see Mr. Layton agrees with our priority.”

The NDP leader argued unsuccessfully for the delay of two planned corporate tax cuts in 2011 and 2012. He said it could generate an extra $6 billion a year, funds he said that could be spent on the most vulnerable people affected by the recession.

“The banks and oil companies don’t need the help,” Layton said. “They only thing that they seem to want to do is give themselves bonuses.”

But Soudas said there were no plans to reverse the planned corporate tax cuts.

“We continue to believe that lower taxes is a good thing for the economy,” he said. “Any of these tax cuts we’ve put in place has been for the good of the economy.”

The minority Conservatives need the support of at least one of the opposition parties to pass their budget early next month.

Layton gave no indication he was in a hurry to bring down the government, saying he wanted to read the budget first before deciding whether to support it.

“When I talk to Canadians, they want to see us get working on the issues that are facing them.”

The NDP has also urged Harper to further extend Employment Insurance benefits and has also called for an extension of the Home Renovation Tax Credit, which expired at the end of January.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is to unveil his latest budget on March 4.

Flaherty met with NDP finance critic Thomas Mulcair earlier this week.

In a letter to Flaherty, Mulcair outlined the NDP’s budget priorities, and pushed for scrapping planned corporate tax cuts in 2011 and 2012.

“Your unbalanced corporate tax policy is exacerbating our overreliance on oil extraction, and contributing to a high dollar, which in turn hampers job creation and exports in the value-added sectors of manufacturing, forestry, aerospace and others,” Mulcair wrote.

Mulcair emerged from his chat with Flaherty guarded, suggesting that the budget may contain unpleasant surprises that the New Democrats would be unable to support.

Mulcair recalled the November 2008 Conservative fiscal update that threatened to eliminate political party subsidies and plunged the House of Commons into a crisis that nearly toppled the government.

“There is no limit to Conservative game playing when Stephen Harper’s evil twin shows up,” Mulcair told The Canadian Press, referring to the 2008 update.